Zvezda M-3 Scout Car ~FINISHED Pg. 9~

Dre- You were right about the seats, the bulge had to be completley trimmed off for the seat cushions to fit. That I did with spure cutters, that's seriously the amount of stryene that had to be removed.

wbill76- Thanks for the comments and for lookin' in!

Here's my progress so far on the scout, going a bit slower then I woud like(probably due to the fact every, single piece needs massive cleanup.) Anyways I got all the seats in finally, and I got all the locating hulls on the bottom of the hull filled in(you got to remeber to do this or it will be impossible later.) The seats are painted with a mixture of Testor's enamel brown & black. As for the drybrushing on the floor and etc. I used a mixture of Testor's Steel & black.

For the upper hull pieces, the marks have been cleaned up and painted. Now I'm just test fitting them, because I just know their's gonna be problems. The fender pieces have also been put together, but they obviously need a ton of cleaning up. Plus on those two small pieces I decided I'm gonna scratch the springs that react w/the counterweight (so some modification had to happen, such as the filling in of locating holes for the kit piece.)

All comments, questions, and suggestions, welcome as always!

Looking good thus far, but a few look-outs that I found on mine.  The bulged out sides on the cushions didn't fit right, so I ground off the bulges to fit the profile of the rolled upholstery seam on the top.  They fit much better this way. 

Really nice touch on the tissue paper, I can't wait to see how that looks painted and weathered.  I'm going to remember this for the future!

I had fit issues with the top hood panel meeting the side panels evenly, so that got glued down in sections for a seamless appearance.  Also watch the decals, while they're OK and in register, they sure didn't want to go down over all of those tie-down lumps on the sides or over the hinges on the top hood panel.  Lots of Solvaset and pin-pricks later, they still don't 'lay down' the way other decals do- a thinner decal with a little more elasticity would have been nice.  If you have any spare Soviet stars and slogans from a better source, I'd use them over the kit supplied decals. 

Dry fitting the wheels on mine showed that only two wheels would touch ground at any time, so I loaded up the body with weights (3 Tamiya paint bottles!) to force all 4 wheels flat and even when I glued them on.  That actually worked out well and didn't give any of the wheels a nasty camber!  I guess that the plastic is soft enough to absorb the difference.

Hope these help and looking forward to seeing your's finished!

terry35 wrote:

MG the seats are coming along well and wow those pin marks look vicious. Progress is slow on this one, looking forward to seeing you progress further. Good luck, Terry.

Thanks for lookin' in! Hopefully I'll get alot of work done this week, since I'm on vacation aka spring break......hopefully.

MG the seats are coming along well and wow those pin marks look vicious. Progress is slow on this one, looking forward to seeing you progress further.

Good luck,

Terry.

Yeah, I know it's been awhile since I last posted an update, due to the fact I got sidetracked by my Universal Carrier. But with that completed, I can once again start work on this build.

 I started the upper hull parts of the scout car. I think the pic below says it all. It needs massive sanding, and a ton of putty. These pieces that are just plain riddled with ejector pin marks. And I mean riddled, heck some of the ejector pin marks almost seem to be in places impossible to sand without wrecking the detail. If their's a carpet monster, then theirs one that's ten times as grim, and that's the ejector pin monster. This one bites.....hard.

The head rests for all the seats have two holes(not all the way through, but almost), like for positioning on each one. However there's no positioning marks on the seats(geez) so I gotta be careful when gluing so it doesn't melt the thin plastic.

As for the seat cushions themselves, I finally put on the tissue to give them more texture. But you gotta remove a pestering seam that can show even through the tissue.

Finally the seats themselves, a little flash had to be removed. However here is where the kit's aging molds shows once again. The tops of the seats have just plain bad molding(it's an old mold), so quite a bit of sanding is neccessary, of which you can see also in the pic.

wbill76 wrote:

Making good progress MG, looking forward to the next update.

Thanks for the comments, wbill76!

Huxy wrote:

That looks sweet....  Tell me, you know of any acrylic that match the weatherd black? It looks spot on.

I've used Tamiya's NATO black XF-69, It makes a really nice weathered black for tires and such. I picked up that tip from someone on the forums here, so I'm not gonna take credit!

Nice work, by the way, Mg! I got one of these in the stash, and I've been following this for tips.

Huxy, thanks for the comments. As for the question, I currently use Floquil enamel Weathered Black. As for an acrylic, Floquil nor any other company makes a paint that is like this to my knowledge. Their is the PollyScale acrylic Grimy Black, but I don't know how this paint looks when dryed, since it's more of a weathering paint like the colors mud and grime. If you want to check the paints Floquil/PollyScale offer here's the link to the paints they offer: http://www.testors.com/category/133504/Floquil

I was able to get quite a bit of work done yesterday an today on my scout car. I finished the muffler, axles, suspension, and everything else on the bottom half of this vehicle. With all the parts in place I was able to start drybrushing some dark-steel paint, made from a mixture of Testor's enamel Steel and Flat Black. I also start painting the cabin with the MM acrylic Olive Drab. 

The tires have also been finished, so here they are without the Silly Putty mask. Though it will be awhile before they can go on permanetly.

Now construction will be moving to the cabin, where work on the eight seats will commence. It should take awhile, since I want to upgrade each seat with more of a realistic fabric texture. Thanks for looking, all comments, questions, and suggestions welcome.

Finally started painting my M-3 scout car. I'm using Model Master Acrylic Olive Drab, and as you can see the base coat has been applied on the lower support structure of the vehicle. Later today I'll get the axles and suspension in place.

I also masked off the tire hubs with silly putty, so now the tires can be painted. They'll be painted using Floquil enamel Weathered Black.

As always all comments, suggestions, and questions welcome!

terry35 wrote:

Is that not the old Italeri mould, if it is then I always thought it was O.K. but then I never had the kit. Terry.

I had it as the Peerless kit before. I hope they improve on it somehow.

Well ,what you have done so far looks good. Can't say much for now but I'm very curious about how this one will progress, I seem to remember the Italeri box model being painted by Verlinden, when I was younger I was always impressed by this, it looked great, then you stated it was a 40 year old mould,,,,,,,,WOW......... that was an eye opener.

Terry.

Here's what I finished so far on my scout car, construction is going quicker then I thought. The tires are finished and the seam is sanded away, had to use three different grits. Along with a few other random parts inside the cabin.

The ejector pin marks on the lower hull have been sanded down and filled with Testor's contour putty. As you can tell there were alot.

A part of the engine has been put into place, alot of putty had to be put around it. Since it had no fit at all with the other parts, it sort of just floated around in that spot. (there were no locating marks/pins at all)

Finally both axles are finished, abit of seam sanding and filling in of incorrect molding(Zvezda's fault) was neccesary.

 Thanks for looking, all comments and questions welcome.

I wish this kit had vinyl tires, all I get is stryene ones that are in two pieces." border="0" width="15" height="15" /> I can see alot of sanding in my future.

Never met any vinyl tires that didn't need to be sanded either... In fact, they HAVE to be sanded to get any kind of "used" look to 'em...

Rob Gronovius wrote:

I think I still have one of the older issues that come with vinyl tires, canvas top and crew figures. Those Peerless Max kits were way ahead of their time, most came with vinyl tires, the 155mm gun came with a metal barrel and metal recoil springs.

 I wish this kit had vinyl tires, all I get is stryene ones that are in two pieces. I can see alot of sanding in my future.

terry35: It's old alright, but most of detail still looks good, however some parts are showing their age. Thanks for checkin' out my build.

Didn't realise it was that old. I only remember the Italeri release, any good luck withthe project.

Terry.

biffa: Huh, didn't even know their was a PE set avaible. Oh well, I'm sure I can make this kit work without it.

terry35: It's a re-box of the 40 year old Peerless Max M-3 Scout Car that has also been re-boxed by Italeri, Testors, and Airfix.

Is that not the old Italeri mould, if it is then I always thought it was O.K. but then I never had the kit.

Terry.